Women Internalize Negative Feedback. Men Internalize Positive Feedback.
- Judy Sims
- Nov 2
- 3 min read
Last week, we talked about how women receive waaaaay more negative feedback at work than men do. This week, let’s talk about the impact of that feedback. Because as it turns out, there’s a gender gap there too.
In 2024, the team at Textio asked about 450 people to share how often they’ve been described with positive and negative terms in workplace feedback. The theory is, if we remember the feedback, we’re more likely to have internalized it.
Men consistently recall hearing positive terms more than women, non-binary, and gender-fluid people. They remember being called “brilliant”, “genius”, “gifted”, “intelligent”, “likeable” and “talented” at rates vastly greater than other genders. Up to 4x more, in fact!
Women on the other hand, recall the negative feedback they’ve heard. A whopping 78% of women recall being described as “emotional’ where only 11% of men remember being called that. Other feedback women remember is being called “unlikable”, “lazy”, and that old chestnut, “difficult”. And it’s not just women. 40% of non-binary/gender-fluid people recall receiving the “difficult” label.
Ugh.
These stereotypes turn up in my coaching practice all the time. Just last week, a woman told me that she was told she was “reactive” because she paused to consider if a decision was fair or not. She presented as calm, confident, and extremely emotionally mature (i.e. not at all reactive), yet she believed she needed to work on her reactivity because she internalized that particular comment without thinking about its validity.
Another client was worried she was “too aggressive” after she was told as much by a colleague who was late with a customer deliverable and didn’t appreciate her stepping in to save the deal.
Another client was convinced she was “sloppy” because one single time early in her career, after working a 60-hour week, she’d made an error in a document late on a Friday afternoon. Her boss gave her a warning about sloppiness, and my client hasn’t trusted herself since.
Sound familiar? This is what we do as women. If someone gives us negative feedback, we assume it’s true. While at the same time, we dismiss positive feedback as unimportant.
What to Do About It?
Before you take any feedback to heart, ask yourself, “Is this useful?” And by “useful” I mean, is it specific, actionable, and focused on job performance rather than personality or style?
Or as I like to think of it, is this feedback intended to expand you or contract you? Is it intended to help you learn and grow and improve? Or is it designed to make you smaller, to make you sit down, to make you comply?
If it’s not useful, let it go.
If it is useful, thank the person who gave it to you and get to work.
Either way, don’t make it bigger than it needs to be. You are whole and complete just the way you are. Nothing is lacking. You’re unfolding just as you should, learning and growing along the way.
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